[Published originally in the September 2005 edition
of Computing Research News, Vol. 17/No. 4]

Musings from the Chair

Computing: Our Role in 21st Century Universities and the Knowledge Economy

By Dan Reed, CRA Board Chair

As computing researchers, we can rightly take pride in having been key
enablers of today’s knowledge economy; networks, sensors, data management
systems, email, web technologies and collaboration tools have helped create the
global village. As Marshall McLuhan described so perspicuously in the 1960s,
“Today, after more than a century of electric technology, we have extended our
central nervous system in a global embrace, abolishing both space and time as
far as our planet is concerned.”

Globalization, like all change, has brought both challenges and
opportunities: challenges to existing structures and processes, and
opportunities for increased collaboration and community building. News and press
sources, including Thomas Friedman’s best-selling book, The World Is Flat, have
focused on the economic impacts of globalization—offshoring, business process
change and economic competitiveness. However, the implications for universities
are just as substantial.

Although some pundits, including this writer, have observed that, given the
slow rate of change, the rector of a medieval university would instantly
recognize today’s university structures, the central theme of university over
the past two hundred years has been increasing democratization of access. In the
United States, early private and public universities were later joined by the
“land grant” institutions, created under the 1862 Morrill Act to create
“Colleges for the Benefit of Agriculture and the Mechanic Arts.” In 1944, the
U.S. “G.I. Bill” made post-secondary education accessible to a new generation of
World War II veterans.

Each of these, and similar legislation elsewhere, redefined the compact
between universities and citizens and broadened participation in higher
education, with concomitant social and economic benefits. Arguably, we are today
renegotiating that compact yet again, albeit implicitly. State funding is a
declining fraction of most U.S. public universities, necessitating new
approaches to mission definition and budgeting. Moreover, the episodic model of
higher education, where young adults matriculate and acquire the knowledge
needed for productive careers, is being challenged by globalization and the
rapid pace of technical change.

In computing, we have long known that an enduring commitment to continuously
updating our technical skills is a prerequisite to first-class research and
education. This requirement now touches a much broader spectrum of society, as
jobs, professions and companies now appear, migrate or disappear in a few years.
In turn, this raises a plethora of questions about how we, as computing
researchers and educators, help revise the university compact in a 21st century
knowledge economy. We are, after all, in the knowledge business!

In this milieu, the policy, social and technical issues abound:

What tools and technologies can best sustain lifelong education?

As the volume of “born digital” data continues to explode, how do we
manage these data to put the right information into the right hands at the
right time? In other words, how can we make Vannevar Bush’s Memex real?

How do we continue to broaden the base of participation, in computing in
particular and in technical disciplines in general?

How can we help build virtual organizations rapidly that combine the
skills of the best people, regardless of location?

How can we foster interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary education that
trains individuals to work in collaborative groups?

As Jim Foley noted in a previous CRN column, “Computing:
We Have a Problem …” (May 2005, p. 4), issues related to computing research
funding and enrollments, within this global context, affect our innovation,
economic growth, international competitiveness, national security, and quality
of life. In addition to the two task forces CRA has recently formed, which Jim
also described in his column, I invite your comments and ideas on additional
roles CRA can and should play in these areas.

Dan Reed (Dan_Reed [at] unc.edu) began a two-year term as CRA’s Board
Chair on July 1. He is the Chancellor’s Eminent Professor at the University of
North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Director of the interdisciplinary Renaissance
Computing Institute (RENCI).